Juniper was a doll. She had a strawberry mouth cut in half. Sweetly red on the edges, that faded into a lovely pink, it was a bit uneven and displaced. She had no nose and saw with one remaining brown eye that blinked, when laid down and up. She was beautiful in a sense that her hair covered most of her face and enveloped her back like the dwindled bark off a Hickory tree. Juniper's gown was tattered and browned with the dirt of my child-like affection. I would stare at her, most days, wondering what she would say if she ever spoke back to me. Hoping for her to speak back to me.
"What tree would you be and where would you be planted?" "Why, I would be a weeping willow. Grounded somewhere for you to care for me.
"I would poetically sigh. Sweeping the words as though it was a dame's voice calling out from the doll.
"A willow, how come?" I would respond.
"Because I wish to weep."
"That's a bit strange. Do you not cry?"
"No, I am a doll, I shan't and I can't."
"That's quite upsetting."
"Yes it is. Now let me ask something young man."
"Yes?" "On the subject, I must say I'm quite jealous.
So, will you please stop shedding tears?"
"I am sorry Juniper, I cannot."
"Why is that?"
"For I am a doll."
"That is quite offensive. As a doll myself. I must say that you, young man, are human through and through."
"No Juniper, you are wrong."
My mother supposedly gifted me Juniper when I was at the ignorant stage of toddlerhood. I grew up believing that the building, housing rats and screaming piglets, like myself, would all be temporary. Either that or my mother would come back to retrieve her forgotten son. I had many things that I wanted to believe in. Unfortunately, as an old Man now, I see that I had hoped for too much and decided on too little. That is something I will die regretting.
—
Grand Nun Marie didn't approve of my imagination. She said it was vulgar and disturbing. Although she said many things, she never took away my beloved Juniper. "You must understand that you are an unsightly child. For that you must make up with talent." "Yes Grand Nun Marie." "Now sing child. Sing." Marie had smited me, then, with a wooden ruler from behind. While I graciously sang.
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"Your face strikes me as plain. That is why you must make up for it in intelligence." "Yes Grand Nun Marie." "Now memorize Psalm child." Marie had pinched me, then, when I slurred my speech or wrote God's lines in a flawed manner.
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"You are to become a Priest. You are to appease me and the orphanage. "Yes Gran Nun marie." "Good, my little Will." Marie had hugged me, then. The great girth of her arms covering my hungry head and smile.
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I remember Grand Nun Marie sat me and Juniper aside, to tell us a story before bed. She called it a life full of sorrow. At the time I enjoyed melancholy because it had been something I found myself feeling, in replacement of joy. I also yearned for her attention, since it separated me from the rest of the vermin that clung to her robe. Whether it had been punishment or encouragement, Grand Nun Maries attention was always, somehow, mine. The story began and Grand Nun Marie spoke deeply like a worn-through man. "There once was a young girl with charming looks who came to bear a child. The wedlock child was named after the late lover who died shortly after his birth. Oh how the young girl loved the man, and was horrified by the thought of living alone with a child. So she returned home to where her father, the governor, lived. She had no love for her Father, who did not let her get married back when her lover was alive. But in time of need she made a deal. To be saved from poverty and illness she had to give up her child and erase her memories of her boy. The father tried every therapy and every shaman craft to rid the child's name of her memory. Forcing drugs down the young girl's throat, cutting bloody slivers of skin from her thigh, to soothing hypnotizes that tricked the brain with a slow clicking clock. But now alone without her child in her cruel fathers home, she began to understand the price she paid. An eternity of solitude with a heart ache full of regret. So in destitute, she left the manor and wandered the ends of the earth to find her son." When the story came to the end Grand Nun Marie said, " It is a shame, for the girl would have truly lived if not for her foolish decisions". I had said "I agree, but did the girl ever find her son?" But by then Grand Nun Marie refused to answer me and bit me goodnight. I had simply assumed Grand Nun Marie found me unpleasant company. The orphanage was surrounded by woods somewhere outside the local town. Although the name of the town had changed from time to time, I had grown up calling it, The tweed. Simply Isabella Brauer 3 because our town was mostly out of the way, far from any popular cities. I had turned twenty when I had been ordained, the Priest of the Tweed as I liked to call it. I thought it was time to leave my childish things behind, and bury the past. So, with mental strain I dug a deep hole and conveyed a traditional funeral for Juniper, my doll. "She lived honestly and well. May her soul live on through the hearts of her loved ones…" I spilled dirt on her box and placed a large stone cut crudely with the letter J. Then went on for forty days, wearing black. I stayed preaching religiously, earning my keep by giving out blessings and dropping newborns heads in water. But when my white gown was shrugged off, I would begin to drink until a numb giddy feeling clouded my judgment and my resentment. No one knew of my nightly afflictions until Grand Nun Marie. She had come in one night, book in hand as I chugged a condemned mixture in stupor. Bloated lips, unfocused eyes and the sharp smell of liquor was all it took. I had waited for her to hit me upside the head with the weighty book. But all she had was a look one makes when tragedy reckons. That night was obscure. But by morning I remember waking up to my doll Juniper, smelling of earth and a small note that said You have some unpleasant habits, that is why you must make up for it in faith. The note was kind, but years of the orphanage had weakened me like an irritated cyst. Surely and horribly infected. The nuns were the doctors that squeezed and thrusted, hoping for the puss to escape from under the skin. But without a knife it tended to stay and fester.
—
"We are gathered here today to wish Grand Nun Marie blessings on her journey to the heavens. May she rest in peace." Her death was not natural. She had been stabbed with a rusted knife by an ambitious man, hoping to relieve people of their torturous lives. Her death was martyred and predictable, as was her will. With a single request for me to speak. I felt no hatred for the woman who acted in place of my true mother. But I felt no love at the time either. The funeral was humble and familiar. I walked up by the time everyone had arrived and I spoke sermons of heartache, boarding oblivion until I saw water lining the brims of everyone's eyes. I sang Grand Nun Marie's favorite song and gave blessings, only a priest of knowledge could give. Lastly, I signed the papers to officiate her death. The name written was Juniper Marie. I recalled a conversation I made with my doll.
"Do you think I will ever meet my mother?"
"I don't see why not."
"But she may as well not exist."
"Well, I do know that Grand Nun Marie takes care of you."
"But she's not my mother."
"I know you wish she was."
I realized then that Juniper had spoken to me. It just wasn't Juniper, my doll. In my last effort to contain my sanity, I walked down to her coffin, where Grand Nun Juniper Marie lay and lifted her dress up to her thighs. Surely there, among the gasps and concerned whispers of the crowd, was my enlightenment. Scars lining down and up her pale and sunken legs.